In this small Liberian village just over the border from Cote d'Ivoire, one out of every 10 people is a French-speaking Ivorian refugee fleeing the country's volatile "Wild West." While tens of thousands of Liberian refugees are still living in Cote d'Ivoire despite a year and a half of peace in Liberia, a mass of frightened people fled in the other direction late last year. A total 3,406 Ivorians turned up here in tiny Loguatuo, seeking assistance.

A World Bank mission visiting Liberia has said the country's transitional government must crack down harder on corruption and show greater transparency in its finances if it is to secure donor funding to help the country recover from 14 years of civil war. The mission, led by Shengman Zhang, the World Bank's managing director, also warned that there was no prospect of the World Bank lending more money to Liberia until the country's current loan arrears of almost US$450 million had been paid off.

In a vote of confidence in Liberia's peace process, the first convoy of Liberian refugees have begun heading home to Lofa county, the hardest-hit area during the 14-year civil war with the largest-scale displacement. 140 Liberian refugees left Guinea's Kouankan camp for Voinjama, the main town in Lofa county, northern Liberia. Most families in the convoy will continue further east to Zorzor district, where the UN refugee agency has set up a transit facility and rehabilitated seven schools and a clinic.

Elections for Liberia's first post-war government will be held on 11 October, the electoral commission has announced. A power-sharing government, including former rebels, has ruled since former President Charles Taylor fled to Nigeria in August 2003.

The United Nations said on Wednesday that it had secured enough money to pay the school fees of nearly 4,000 former Liberian combatants who were expelled from secondary schools last month because there was no money left in the rehabiliation fund to pay for their tuition. Charles Achodo, a policy advisor of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), told reporters that all those ex-fighters who had been asked to leave school should be back in the classroom by the end of next week.

The Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist must be cross-culturally adept, collaborative and team-oriented. The Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist must also have the ability to quickly orient his/herself to a complex project, and to quickly grasp the activities and impact under each of the three program components.

The plight of Liberian refugees and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) has been explored in a new book that will be launched in the Liberian capital, Monrovia, on Friday. "A Life Removed: Hunting for Refuge In the Modern World" by British author and journalist Rose George, focuses on what it means to suddenly be made a modern-day refugee or IDP. She researched it by talking to displaced people in Liberia and refugees in camps in Cote d'Ivoire.

Nurses and doctors are refusing to return to work in the Liberian countryside because their salaries are too small and often late and the transitional government's promise to pay 18-months of salary arrears has failed to materialise. "The government cannot force us to go into the interior and work, because in the end, we will have nothing to live on," Klomah Seblee, president of the National Health Workers Association told IRIN. "We have families whose needs we have to meet."

The AED Social Change Group's Center for Civil Society and Governance (CCSG) focuses on projects and research that strengthen democracy and the ability of citizens and citizen groups to solve social and political problems as well as influence policy decisions that affect their lives. CCSG oversees a variety of USAID Cooperative Agreements, including the Global Civil Society Strengthening (GCSS) and Capable Partners (CAP) Leader with Associates Awards and the Managing African Conflict (MAC) IQC. As a growing unit within AED, CCSG continually responds to proposals with democracy-building and civil society strengthening objectives.

The flood of refugees fleeing Cote d’Ivoire into north-eastern Liberia since early November trickled to a halt for the first time last weekend, with a few even returning home as tension eased. UN officials in Cote d'Ivoire confirmed that small groups of refugees had returned home. The UNHCR said the arrival of the refugees had not caused problems with the local population. People were working side-by-side on farms and helping each other with child care.

At least 10,000 Ivorians have fled their homeland in the last two weeks, fearing a fresh chapter of violence after the government in Abidjan broke an 18-month ceasefire and bombed the rebel-held north. The refugees, most of whom are women, are strung out along remote areas of the border. Most appeared to have come from the area round Guiglo, on the government side of the frontline in western Cote d'Ivoire, and from around Danane, a rebel-held city near the Liberian border.

The hardships of life in Buduburum camp are not immediately apparent. On first entering the community it looks more like a bustling town than a refugee camp. UNHCR representative Needa Jehu-Hoyah says poverty, unemployment and a severe shortage of drinking water cause serious problems for the people who live here. But what awaits those who do decide to return to Liberia?

The United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF), in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, and other educational partners, has launched a girls education enrolment Drive in Bomi, Bong and Cape Mount County. Tom Shafer, UNICEF Project Officer for Education, said enrolling the girl child is not only the fulfilment of her birthright, but gives the world the hope for the future of girls so that they will take their rightful places in school and in greater society.

Chanting “no more war” and praying for peace, a first batch of 500 internally displaced people (IDPs) headed home on Monday from a camp where they had lived for years, as the UN and Liberia's government kicked off a scheme to resettle 300,000 IDPs. The UN and the Liberian government have said people must be encouraged to return only on condition a county is safe. Key benchmarks for determining an areas safety are completion of disarmament, the presence of civil authorities, rehabilitation of basic services and unhindered access for humanitarian workers.

Aid workers have been forced to suspend plans to bring Liberian refugees back home after riots in the capital Monrovia killed at least 16 people in the worst outbreak of violence the West African country has witnessed since its civil war ended a year ago.

The United Nations officially launched a nationwide programme to help educate thousands of former combatants in this war-battered West African nation. The UN will pay for basic education costs for young fighters participating in a disarmament programme that ends on October 31. It is unclear how much the project will cost.

Liberia's transitional government has been warned that it must account for public funds in a more transparent manner if the United Nations is to lift sanctions on timber and diamond exports and if donors are to release funds for the country's reconstruction. This blunt warning was delivered by a joint team from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the US Treasury which is visiting Liberia to look at the way the government is handling its finances, the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) said.

The National Transitional Government of Liberia has declared six counties ready for the return of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). Launching a media campaign on the return of IDPs, Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary General, Mr. Abou Moussa said, "The greatest dream of every displaced Liberian is to go back home in safety and dignity, and we are here to facilitate that." The return will not only give IDPs a chance to begin a new life, it will also enable them to participate in the elections scheduled for October 2005.

UN peacekeepers in Liberia used teargas to disperse a demonstration on Wednesday by parents and pupils who want their primary school in the capital reopened. Hundreds of demonstrators, including schoolchildren in uniform, disrupted traffic to protest the closure of the Early Learning Foundation School, which has not opened its doors since the new term started on October 5. UN troops clad in riot gear lobbed tear gas into the crowd after local youths joined the initially peaceful protest.

On Friday, October 8, 2004, Power & Press Freedom in Liberia, 1830-1970: The Impact of Globalization and Civil Society on Media-Government Relations by Carl Patrick Burrowes (2004) will be presented and discussed in Washington, DC. The Writers' Corner provides a forum for prominent authors to debut their most current works on issues pertaining to Africa and the Diaspora.